Interest Check - Pathfinder/Spheres of Guile game

[GralphidBlackstrip]

I am considering GM-ing a high-ish level (12 maybe) gestalt pathfinder spheres game. I know from past experience that there will be a lot of interest. The twist is that I was considering requiring one side of the gestalt to be spheres of Guile classes only (with the other side your choice of SoG, SoP, or SoM, including base class archetypes)

The motivation for this is:

1. I've read the rules, but still don't feel like I know Spheres of Guile very well and this seems like a way of learning how it works in practice.

2. My first glance is that Spheres of Guiles characters are less powerful but have a lot of utility. The hope is that having one side be SoG would lead to characters that are more flexible but have less raw power than a more open gestalt.

The premise of the game by the way would be that a fairly generic fantasy world is shocked when a vastly powerful, and previously unknown underground civilization launches devastating attacks on it. Desperately fighting and barely holding on, the leaders of several nations beg a group of heroes to perform a likely suicide mission: attempt to infiltrate the tunnels and act as a mobile guerrilla force sabotaging soft targets, burning supply depots, and/or provoking revolts to try to even the odds above-ground. The PCs would be in foreign turf and vastly outnumbered, and thus forced to rely on stealth, diplomacy, infiltration, and clever planning instead of raw strength.

 

So would the spheres of guile requirement make people more or less interested in the game? Do you perceive any problems with this idea?

[LDDragon]

Interested, it is a good idea, to get more familiar with Spheres of Guile. I anticipate interest will be high.

[OzzyKP]

I am very, very interested in a Spheres game that prioritizes Guile. It looks like an awesome (though complicated) addition to the game and I followed it during development. That said, for folks trying to learn a new system (or addon to the system) a 12th level gestalt game is rather overwhelming. If it was level 3-6th it'd be far more manageable (I'd still prefer no gestalt, but could handle it if it were lower level).

[OzzyKP]

16 hours ago, GralphidBlackstrip said:

2. My first glance is that Spheres of Guiles characters are less powerful but have a lot of utility. The hope is that having one side be SoG would lead to characters that are more flexible but have less raw power than a more open gestalt.

I think less powerful really depends on the campaign. Certainly less powerful for a dungeon crawl, but for an intrigue heavy or other skill-heavy game SoG would add quite a lot of power and utility.

[Yamazaki]

Ozzy is right - Guile is meant for more social and intrigue focused campaigns. It's got a handful of things to dabble with that are combat/exploration focused, but that's a lesser focus compared to Power and Might's sides.

I am interested in the concept, although on the fence about the Guile focus - I find it's a great supplementary aspect and it has some fun toys to play around with, but its intrigue focus is less of my jam. Also Outwit makes no bloody sense to me on how to execute it.

[TheFred]

Spheres of Guile seems like Spheres taken to its logical extreme... which is to say, an excess of self-indulgent feature-creep that conspires to multiply the complexity of the game by a large factor whilst probably not making a meaningful improvement to the gameplay. I'm all for Spheres, but one look at Guile made me feel like I have gone too far.

That said... I think that a game actually built around Guile - an intrigue/social game, certainly - might let it work better. It has a bajillion and one new features and concepts, and I get the impression that these only really work if the DM is making space for them in the game. What does it matter to learn an NPC's motivations if the motivations are always "hit you with this club until you die"? What does it matter if, when you adopt an approach, you get the option to apply your negligible intrigue bonus to your social rolls whenever you spend one or more dice from your die pool to increase one - if a band of orcs can just kill you before you've finished asking what the heck an approach even is? However, in game where these concepts are a bit more built-in, perhaps they can become more meaningful.

Personally I love the idea of an intrigue game... as you might have guessed, I'm not a big fan of Guile, but possibly the right pitch could tempt me (if someone could explain which social modes are supposed to refill my intrigue dice pools when performing a group therapy session). And anyway, maybe Guile just isn't for me, but I think you will probably have sufficient interest anyway.

[Thramzorean]

Yup, up for this.

[namo]

I'd be up for it, since I love intrigue and would like to spend more time with Guile spheres... even though Guile does seem bloated.

But as mentioned Guile is a bit underpowered in many cases, so there's a risk the Guile half of the gestalt would get overshadowed by the SoP / SoM half (e.g. "blast" the target with Mind rather than bothering to learn their motivations and spending 10min on Diplomacy). Perhaps partial gestalt (only 4 or 6 levels on the non-Guile side ; but Champion classes / archetypes might complicate this setup) or non-gestalt would suit your aims better.

With that said I'd perfectly OK with gestalt 12; I want more Spheres in my gaming in general. ;-)

[Inquisitor D]

... I know it's petty. I know it's just a class/archetype name. But the prospect of playing a Barista/Mastermind is fun. ^^